Wake Up Call
by Storm Seller
Summary: It's getting to be a habit, this. House messing with him in the middle of the night... House/Wilson: Friendship or Slash.


**Wake-Up Call.**

Author: Storm

Cast: House/Wilson (friendship or slash, depending on which goggles you wear).

Rating: Gen.

Disclaimer: Everything belongs to Greg House. Including his creators. And theirs.

Summary: It's getting to be a habit, this. House messing with him in the middle of the night.

Words: 726

A/N: Written in response to a challenge by **silver_trails**. _The Challenge_**:**

1. The same sentence must be used at the beginning and at the end.  
2. The character should observe their surroundings.  
3. Something must happen to make the character change the way they look at their surroundings.  
4. No more than one adjective is to be used! (Ahem. I fail here).

* * *

His tongue is trapped behind his teeth. A near miracle of self-control, that. It was ten-past too late o' clock when he got home tonight and it's a quarter to _this isn't happening_ now. Twenty-seven minutes of sleep. Twenty. Seven. His eyes burn with the shingle doled out by the sandman before that _jackass_ chased him off. The ache reminds him of the kind that presages tears. It might now. His sleep debt dates back to med school and every night awake since weighs on him like a whole bale of straw on a broken-backed camel.

It's getting to be a habit, this. House messing with him in middle of the night. If it isn't buckets of water placed so that he wakes wishing he'd had the forethought to sleep with a bedpan under him, it's provoking Lucas into setting off their sprinklers. Wilson would never have had the gall to buy this place out from under Cuddy if it weren't for House egging him on, after all. There's a water theme here that he doesn't care for one bit. His credit card hasn't recovered from the last wringing-out of the fixtures and fittings.

He stumbles out of bed and within four steps trips over House's cane, discarded wherever he feels like, as usual. His foot crunches on a popper-pack of ibuprofen, also slung aside along with House's jeans, belt, shirt, shoes, socks and boxers. They've been strewn out to taunt him. It's a garment trail left by a Hansel-in-the-making right to the door of something far better than an edible cottage: Wilson's en-suite.

The door is ajar and he knows before he enters what he will find. House will be luxuriating in the tub to prove that he can, to prove that Wilson has _no_ privacy, to prove something that no one but House will ever understand, let alone at three a.m. His head will be tipped back and one arm will be stretched along the bath edge, whilst he plays with a yellow duck. The water will be deep enough that it is slurped down the overflow with every movement; the excess burbling along the pipe in the wall behind Wilson's bed is what woke him. Steam will have blurred the window and the mirror over the sink. There will be a cartoon drawn in the mist on the glass.

Wilson contemplates stopping now and crawling back into bed, as far under the heap of covers as possible, so that House doesn't have the satisfaction of seeing that he has, as always, managed to get Wilson's attention. But ignoring House never makes him go away and that suck-suck of water sloshing down the run-off pipe is annoying. A dozen rants line themselves up on Wilson's tongue to be fired at Dr. Sirenomelia, as he shuffles up to the doorway and glares in.

As expected, House is immersed. The water is deep enough that it gurgles at the mouth of the overflow. Steam floats up to fog the window and condenses on the globe around the light bulb. But he is not stretched out, toes toying with the tap to make it drip-splosh-drip. His bare back curves like a comma, marks a sudden pause on the threshold between bedroom and bathroom, belligerence and bewilderment.

Wilson's eyes widen as they tick between House and the last sock abandoned on the tiles. The clothes were not laid out in a trespasser's trail to bait him. They were torn off and forgotten before they fell from House's hands. He cast his cane down to get at them and hopped here, grabbing at whatever he could to keep himself from falling. How he hadn't woken Wilson in his scramble between the bed and the bathtub is beyond him. This is not a battlefield with a House's flag staked upon it. It is a bell jar.

There is nothing written on the glass, only the smear of a hand slapped into it for support in passing. House's arm is stretched out on the side of the tub, yes, and he holds the yellow duck. His fingers noose its neck, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing, the life out of it. With every flex, its head bulges to eight times its normal size. Either its body, or House's, creaks under the strain. Wilson hastens closer, now wide-awake, and bound for the emergency medicine cabinet under the sink. The scar on House's right thigh twitches in constant paroxysm. His tongue is trapped behind his teeth.

_Comments are like Wilson's macadamia nut pancakes ;)_


End file.
